


Steady as it Goes

by SilviaKundera



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Future Fic, Gen, Immortality, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-16
Updated: 2010-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-13 05:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/133657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilviaKundera/pseuds/SilviaKundera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Future-Fic. Caroline (Salvatore) Forbes comes of age.<br/><i>"Other things may change us, but we start and end with family." - Anthony Brandt</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Steady as it Goes

Something like 2,300 Americans are reported missing each day (she read it somewhere, or heard it from them, her strange brothers, those fountains of detailed, useless knowledge). Now Caroline is one of them.

She didn't leave a note. Stefan says that's best, in the way that he says truths he wishes he wasn't sure of.

Caroline doesn't think about what her mother wonders-- if she remembers, now, if something snapped, if she saw splattered red or the right size cellar, if she searched very far. Caroline likes to imagine what her mother is doing, just regular doing-things, _right then_ , and Damon will play along if he's there.

Damon is reassuringly, habitually _good_ at that. Playing along, finishing your thought, your sentences, serving it back like a bright rubber ball. She can see their good years in him, the ones the brothers don't talk about, ever, keeping to past arguments and times it ended in too much death, because they're contrary and _stupid_ and afraid of grace. Safer to ruin it.

*

She's going to make these _all_ years they don't talk about.

They'll be no notes anymore because they're going to the same place.

*

They take a furnished apartment in the heart of the city that third year, and Stefan goes out to stock the bar and buy glasses while they play. Caroline watches Damon hook up the television (because it's funny when he can't find the cords, because he never plans when he packs, never thinks about when they _get there_ , and then he's impatient and kicks holes in things) and tells him what show she thinks her mother must be watching, if she hasn't been held up by the Council, and Damon hums at the back of his throat and bets she'll order pizza.

They enroll at the local community college – the one with an oak tree for a mascot, because Damon says that's hilarious, and a terrible football team, because Stefan doesn't want the attention of scouts, and because Caroline wants at least 10 senior years under her belt before trying out Harvard. Stefan thinks she's being too hard on herself. Caroline thinks in this new life she never wants to feel scared, or dumb, ever again if she can help it.

*

When Caroline was 6 years old, she wanted to be Wonder Woman.

At 17 she wanted to be a newscaster, and then one split her head against glass.

Damon says she's totally welcome to be his hero, anytime, and his mouth is doing stupid things when he says it but she actually doesn't think he's making fun of her or lying. Which should be weird, admittedly, coming from a guy who's made her feel like the most horrible, nothing person and then get stupid-drunk enough to cry.

Damon doesn't think there's anything she can't do now.

*

Damon says that person doesn't matter anymore. (with the broken head and broken heart and simple dreams that crumbled with too little air) And Stefan always looks at him with that tight, wounded face she hates, like he wants to say that _they did_.

And she thinks she understands, because Stefan had loved that boy so hard, so easily, he can't ever stop. But that girl, that person-who-was-Caroline, who was two dimensions, and she is three, four, five now, just more of _everything_ \-- that girl didn't know that air tastes and the sound of overlapping streets and how to think a dozen things at once and the real smell of buildings. How to truly love, hoarding and selfishly. She's gone, if she's ever really been, and her memories are colorless in comparison.

She knows: Elena always picked Bonnie first for dodge-ball and secrets; she bruised her fists against the wall the morning her dad left; her sixth grade teacher honestly, inexplicably, hated her; once Damon bit her in the stomach so deep (after fucking her slow, just how she liked it), cutting through muscle, that it felt like dying; and she was never convinced that zucchini could be good in lasagna.

Caroline knows these things, but they're not real like now. Like the symphony of their fireplace (the clink of her glass against its crackles and pops), the notes of Stefan's cologne, and the broken leaves smell of a squirrel hunt.

Not true like her mom, who she gave up and she loves, so much, though she doesn't remember why.

*

Damon says not to worry about that either, because it's boring.

Damon's kind of really smart about stuff sometimes, when he's not the most annoying person on the planet.

*

They used to check their emails, but they don't anymore. Not the old accounts.

At first the boys kept their phones -- scrolling back through texts and missed calls, the siren song of their temporary small town life. Caroline dropped hers at the border and told Stefan to step on it, racing his stupid, gaudy red sports car until she could feel nothing but the wind against her face and gravel exploding under her feet.

She met a witch in Virginia Beach who made Damon laugh his real laugh and stripped her account, hidden among an invasion of thousands, from Tumblr, Flickr, and Facebook. There will always be traces, but Mystic Falls is a strange island of a town, she knows now, that keeps its business to itself.

Caroline likes to think that one day Bonnie will have babies – more Bennett witches with Bonnie's tough eyes and kind mouth. She hopes that Jeremy will never give up drawing. She wants Tyler to find a family. She bets it's only a matter of time until Alaric runs for mayor.

She might never know these things, for sure, because they're not going back until everyone is dead.

*

The oak tree is surprisingly fierce on her sweatshirt. Its leaves are outlined in brackish red, and the ink bleeds through to stain her bra when Damon showers her with water after their first track meet.

Stefan won't let her try hockey, but he comes to watch them run circles and trip each other out of victory, pretending to sweat. He stands smirking, safe on the bleachers. It's distracting and devious and _completely_ the reason she turns the hose on him. He dodges and lifts an eyebrow as she snarls at him.

"Come on, come down," Caroline tells him.

She says (he's smiling down at his sneakers, she's got him), "I'll be your best friend".

Like her uniform (like the square brick buildings, like the students whose names she won't learn), the real campus grove is wilting. She can smell the decay (under a thousand different bright things), where the bugs got in. It reminds her of the rust eating at their fire escape and everything that can no longer touch her.

"So who am I, then?" Damon calls, hands on his hips.

No one is looking. "Someone who can't catch me," Caroline promises, tucks her head down, and sprints.

end.


End file.
